We had a bit of a lull in the mailbag this week, so this week’s question comes by solicitation from Rachel K. in Brooklyn, NY, one of the editors working on The Divine Heretic series. (If you have a burning question that you’d like to see printed and answered, please spare my suffering contractors and send it to [email protected]).

Why did you choose to write Seven Days of Mercy for the Apostatic Priest in the first person? What were some of the benefits and challenges to telling this story through a narrow POV?

Rachel understood the assignment. That’s a huge question worthy of its own blog post, but I’ll try to be concise (not my strength).

Almost all problems in fiction are problems of POV, so I always try shifting the POV when something isn’t clicking. That’s how I arrived at the first-person narration in Seven Days of Mercy. I knew I had the kernel of a compelling story, but I couldn’t quite bring it to life on the page until I found my way to Ruxindra’s first-person POV. After that, it was like a dam broke. The whole story inundated my word processor, and I hammered out a draft in about six weeks. So the easy answer is, I picked this perspective because it worked.

In a general aesthetic sense, there are real advantages to writing in the first person. The novel in its contemporary form demands a focus on interiority (thanks, Russians). Without it, the story seems colorless and limp, a leaden string of lifeless prose. When I’m editing or critiquing the work of other authors, this is one of the most common problems I identify, and it can really hold a novel back. The first person is a bit of a short cut. When you write in the first person, the narrator’s interiority flows naturally. It’s hard to have a character narrate their story without revealing something of their interior life. (Hard, but not impossible. I’ve seen some things, yo.)

It’s also limiting, however. The first person offers a very narrow aperture into the world of the story, and this can be problematic in genres defined by scope like epic fantasy and space opera. In Seven Days of Mercy, I took the challenge as a kind of oulipian constraint, and I actually think the need to work within the limitation made the story stronger. Hopefully you’ll all agree! You’ll have a chance to read a preview soon. 

If you would like to submit a question to be printed and answered (anonymously or otherwise), simply send your question to [email protected]. No question is off limits!